Galloway: WR Position a Work in Progress
March 15, 2015 02:17 PM | General
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| Senior Jordan Thompson is West Virginia's top returning receiver with 49 catches for 598 yards and two touchdowns in 2014. | |
| All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo | |
Galloway will be yelling a lot and coaching his guys a lot harder than usual because he’s got a lot of work to do to get his guys ready for 2015.
A lot.
“It’s going to be hard,” Galloway said earlier this week. “I am going to make this a rough spring for those guys.”
There are some familiar names that Galloway will be working with this spring, such as inside receivers Jordan Thompson and Daikiel Shorts - complimentary guys who worked alongside Kevin White and Mario Alford in 2014 - but no one close to being The Guy heading into the season.
The Guys, White and Alford, combined to catch 174 passes for 2,392 yards and 21 touchdowns, a very high percentage of West Virginia's passing offense last season.
So, who will step up and assume the responsibility of taking over that type of production?
Will it be a couple of guys? Will it have to be more than that?
Those are questions that Galloway would like to have answered by the end of spring, but it could stretch into the fall when the three newcomers arrive this summer.
Inside receiver has most of the experience returning where Thompson (49 catches for 598 yards and two touchdowns) and Shorts (24 catches for 346 yards and two touchdowns) are expected to line up in 2015.
“The good thing about Jordan and Daikiel is they’ve played a lot of football,” noted Galloway.
Don’t forget, too, that running back Wendell Smallwood can comfortably slide out into the slot and catch passes as well (31 catches for 326 yards), and freshman Lamar Parker is versatile enough to play both inside and outside receiver.
Sophomore Jacky Marcellus is another inside guy who will get a long look at slot receiver this spring. That gives West Virginia a pretty good group of players to work with inside.
That's not the case at outside receiver, and that is where Galloway is going to have to focus a lot of his time and energy (and yelling) this spring.
He listed Devonte Mathis, Vernon Davis Jr., Ricky Rogers and Shelton Gibson as the four players who will get the first crack at the two vacant outside spots.
Then comes the next wave of guys, beginning in May when JC transfer Ka’Raun White (the younger brother of Kevin White) and Florida prep standout Jovon Durante arrive, followed by touted Virginia prep star Gary Jennings, who is expected to be on campus in June.
Of the guys here on campus right now, Mathis has the measurables at 6-feet-1, 212 pounds to be the physical, go-up-and-get-it type of receiver the Mountaineers are looking for on the outside. However, Galloway said he is still waiting for the light bulb to go off for Mathis.
“Like I said with Kevin a few years ago, he has to decide what type of player he wants to be,” said Galloway. “He’s very athletic; very talented. He can run and catch; he’s physical and big and now he needs to get into his comfort zone. That’s the part that we are working on with him right now.”
Shelton Gibson was a heavily recruited player coming out of Cleveland Heights, Ohio and is a youngster Mountaineer fans have pegged for future stardom, but his progress was delayed a year ago and his first-year stat line in 2014 showed only four catches for 60 yards with one of those being a 47-yarder against Texas A&M in the Liberty Bowl. Multiply that by about 25 and that’s what Gibson will have to do this fall to duplicate White’s 2014 production.
Rogers has nice size (6-feet-1, 201 pounds) and a year of stress-free development under his belt, while Davis Jr. is one of the fastest players on the team.
But can that translate into production on the football field?
Can these guys consistently get off of the press coverage at the line of scrimmage they are going to see on a weekly basis playing in the Big 12?
Can they catch the ball over the middle when it’s third and eight?
Can one of these guys catch a slip screen when players are flying all around them and can they elude tacklers and take it to the house?
And, just as importantly, are they willing to block the way White and Alford did for the Mountaineers last season?
“They’ve got to play tough because they are not big like Kevin,” said Galloway. “It’s going to be a combination of cleaning up a lot of stuff and playing tough because we’ll be going against some good DBs.”
Galloway says his No. 1 concern throughout the spring will be finding a group of receivers that can perform on a consistent basis.
“They can all run,” he said. “Vernon is as fast as anyone we’ve got. Mathis is fast. Shelton is fast, so now it’s just being able to put it all together and get that package real tight and go to work.”
In the same breath, Galloway said he is not overly worried about the 2014 production that must be made up in 2015. Dana Holgorsen’s system has been spitting out 1,000-yard receivers going all the way back to his days at Texas Tech.
Therefore, it’s not a matter of having a 100-catch, 1,000-yard guy but rather who that 100-catch, 1,000-yard guy is going to be?
“Are we worried? No. Somebody is going to catch 100 balls for a thousand yards. I promise,” said Galloway.
It’s just that Galloway may have to do a little more yelling than usual this spring to get somebody to the point where they are capable of doing that.
“It’s going to be hard,” he repeated for a third or fourth time. “I will be coaching these guys very hard – just like going back to old-school.”
The yelling begins later today.
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